Tuesday, 21 February 2017

Guest Blogging ~ Haley Walsh

I’m a
huge fan of movies as well as a TV addict. I love watching fiction performed.
And when it comes to my writing, I write cinematically, too, that is, the
dialog is lively and I set the scene so that a reader can clearly see it unfold
in their mind, like a movie. And who wouldn’t love to see their work turned
into a film or TV show?

I write
the Skyler Foxe Mysteries, a series of books with a gay protagonist who is a
high school English teacher who stumbles into murders and makes it his
job—along with the help of his Scooby Gang of friends who were all former
hook-ups—to solve the crimes. It’s a rom-com series full of humor and heart,
with Skyler getting himself into all sorts of funny shenanigans and unlikely
circumstances (I mean, come on! If you found a dead body, is the first thing on
your mind, “I think I can solve this crime!” or is it “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Call
911!”)

Since
Logo isn’t pounding down the door trying to get to produce the series for
television, the next best thing is an audiobook.

Now, I
was lucky enough to land one of the suddenly most popular narrators around, the
versatile and now award-winning Joel Leslie. And quite frankly, if you’ve
enjoyed his work, you have me to thank because it was the Skyler Foxe series
that gave him his first narrating job.

I love
audiobooks! I loved listening to them long before I ventured into the game
myself and now I really love them. There is nothing quite like hearing your own
words performed so touchingly or with the humor you wrote on the page. In fact,
I’m so invested now, I even write my characters hearing Joel’s voice in my
head. That’s a huge compliment, by the way.

I have
readers who are now confirmed listeners. They will only listen to the audiobook. Hey, who doesn’t like a book read to
you? It looks like more and more people are indeed listening to audiobooks. According
to a survey conducted by the Audio Publishers Association, there is a rise in
the number of audiobooks published every year (35,713, in 2014, nearly double
of the previous year’s total of 16,039) and a huge rise in listeners. And since
now that they aren’t those bulky packages of CDs and can be uploaded to your
phone, it’s easy to take them everywhere with you: shopping, exercising,
commuting, or just cleaning the house. God, did that sound like a commercial or
what?

My latest
Skyler Foxe Mystery, CRAZY LIKE A FOXE, was just released last month and
funnily enough, I’d love to offer one for free to the readers of this blog. If
you’d like to know more about the series (and see an interview and a video of
Joel narrating one of my books—it’s hilarious, by the way) click on over the
SkylerFoxeMysteries.com. There’s a contest going on right now and the winner
gets their own name in the book as a character in the next Skyler Foxe Mystery,
STONE COLD FOXE.

In CRAZY
LIKE A FOXE: High school English teacher Skyler Foxe swears he’s done being an
amateur sleuth. Instead, he’d rather concentrate on his career as a teacher and
on his hot boyfriend and head football coach Keith Fletcher, who is busy with
football practice and an interesting new player that puts Keith in the
spotlight for a change. But Skyler encounters a few homegrown surprises of his
own, not the least of which is the unwelcome appearance of one of Keith’s old
flames. What does HE want? And then Skyler is confronted with two shocking bits
of news in his own backyard that makes him rethink his own future plans,
whatever those are. But all that gets put aside when a murder occurs in plain
sight at an outdoor concert. Skyler, his Scooby Gang, and even Keith join in to
investigate a murder that’s far too close to home.

GIVE AWAY

Haley Walshis giving away one copy of the audiobook. To have a chance of winning, leave your name and address so Haley has a way of getting in touch with you.

AUTHOR BIO: With
a long history in the arts in Los Angeles, Haley Walsh spent a good part of her
early years involved in the theatre and as a freelance graphic designer. Later,
she turned a long-time hobby of writing novels into a career and lives a double
life as a medieval mystery author under another name Jeri Westerson
while living the other half as Haley Walsh, writing about her gay amateur
sleuth, high school English teacher Skyler Foxe. Skyler Foxe Mysteries

4 comments:

Thanks for the post! I got into audiobooks in the past year and really enjoy them. Recently listened to one by Joel Leslie - he's an awesome narrator. He did a lot of different voices and it really added to the story. So, thanks for giving him his first narration job. :-)